


the back nine

by alchemystique



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 20:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8260087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: Ginny and Mike take up golf. It goes about as well as expected.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I’m so disgusted with myself. It’s been three episodes. Why have you all encouraged me to become this person.

1\. Fairway

“So we gonna talk about what really went on down in Texas with that ‘buddy’ of yours?”

Ginny takes a deep breathe and reminds herself that she’s the one who invited him here. He looks ridiculous, if she’s being honest, the polo he’s wearing so out of sorts with the beard he won’t shut up about, his shorts (they’re bordering on pink, and she’s never letting him live this down) looking like he hasn’t worn them in a damn long while. “I thought we were here to golf?”

“You’re here to golf, I’m here to wheedle gossip out of you and drink all the beer I stashed in the cart.”

“For a guy who says he doesn’t golf, you sure do look the part.”

“I’m blending. You gotta blend, Baker. Besides, I’ve done -”

“Charity events, yeah, you said. Like, fifty times on the drive over here.”

They’re on their eighth hole already, and Ginny still isn’t sure exactly why she’d invited him, except - except Travis’ words stuck with her, and she’s played like crap in the last three games, and all this attention is eating at her, and she just wants, like, five minutes to stand around and not think about the fact that she’s the biggest celebrity in the world right now. 

Mike Lawson is good for that. Mike Lawson doesn’t give a damn about her celebrity. Mike Lawson thinks all that stuff is a joke, a distraction. Mike Lawson is a pain in her ass, but all he cares about is the way she plays ball.

She watches him squint across the green, one hand over the rim of his cap, watches the way his jaw rolls over the ever present gum in his mouth, watches him swing his club and the ball arc far left of the hole he’s aiming for, watches the roll of his shoulders as he turns to look at her. “Explain to me why the hell you call this shit relaxing, again?”

“I just like watching you lose, Lawson.”

He scowls when her next shot makes it in.

2\. Second Stroke

“Go away.”

He stays silent, still leaning against the pillar beside her, watching her as she continues to swing, sending golf balls flying off toward the back of the range. 

She takes a chunk shot, the divot flying a few feet in front of her, and his quiet sniff behind her is the last straw - she spins to face him, the putter still in hand, and wants to punch his stupid face in his stupid leather jacket. 

“I told you to leave,” she warns, and he rolls his neck before he pushes himself off the pillar by his shoulders.

“Look, it’s not a big deal. The press will obsess over it for a few days, and then a Kardashian will do something stupid with a basketball player and this will all blow over.”

“This will all blow over. Do you know how many times I’ve heard that today? Do you know how many times I’ve found those words comforting? Just guess. Guess, Mike!”

He blinks. She doesn’t use his first name all that often, so maybe that’s where the surprise comes from.

“This is my life! 24/7, they’re either talking about how I’m a gimmick, or they’re finding ways to dig into my past, or they’re using my personal life to explain to the world why a woman can’t cut it with the boys! And I’m done with it. I’m done.”

“So, what, that’s it. You’re just gonna quit? You’re gonna leave the team high and dry? You’re gonna make me deal with Miller all day long? Thought you had thicker skin than that.”

“Screw. You.”

“Thought you had a rule against that.” There’s no hint of a joke in his eyes - it’s a goddamn challenge, and she’s not rising to the bait. “Though I guess, hey, if you’re quitting, maybe you can get rid of that rule.”

Her glare seems to have little to no effect on him. She shouldn’t be surprised - in the months she’s known him he’s never been the one to back down, and for some reason, some crazy, unknowable reason, she feels herself deflate. He has this effect on her, makes her run hot and cold like no one in her life has every been able to do, and - and she’s so tired.

He catches the moment she breaks, eyes going wide for just a fraction of a moment like he doesn’t know what to do with this new facet of her, but then -

Then he’s pulling her into a gruff, one armed hug, and her nose presses into the space between his jacket and the scruff of his beard, and she pulls in a deep breath, her lips mouthing against his tee shirt. 

They stand there like that for god knows how long, his quiet presence calming her frayed nerves, until she finally gathers herself enough to pull away. She bats at her watery eyes for a moment, daring him to say anything.

“I’m not quitting,” she tells him, and he nods, one of those solemn, quiet affirmations she’s seen beneath his mask across the pitch before. 

“Coulda told you that days ago, rookie,” he tells her, and she watches him shuck off his leather jacket, digging through her golf bag for a club. 

“You aren’t gonna tell me to get over it, or something?”

He tips his head back, glances up at the pinks and purples shifting across the sky in the dying sunlight. “I see or hear a single whiff of those pictures I’m gonna break some bones, Baker. This wasn’t a ‘rub some dirt in it’ pow wow. Just. If you wanna talk. I’m around.”

He turns away, grabbing a handful of golf balls from her bucket and setting up next to her, ignoring the way her eyes follow him, but when he swings, the first ball sails all the way to the back of the range, and she hears a dull thud as it hits the retaining wall at the far end.

3\. Green

“What the hell.”

From anyone else, it would sound like a question, but as Ginny turns to stare at her captain (her captain, she reminds herself, just her captain, just the guy who gave her pep talks and told the corniest jokes she’d ever heard and kept her sane on the mound. Her captain.) weaving his way towards her, she thinks it’s mostly just a confused statement. Blip is trying to pretend he’s interested in anything but the tiny little golf shorts Evelyn is wearing, and Ginny is fiddling with the strap of her bag, and somewhere to her left Amelia is hissing into her phone and eyeing the plethora of visors being worn with a disdain Ginny hasn’t seen on her in a while. 

Mike’s eyes are on her other guest, though, the one lounging against the golf cart, wild curly hair pulled back at the nape of his neck, sunglasses shoved over his face, fingers massaging his temple. 

It had been a weird, spur of the moment thing - she and Mike had had plans to do this for weeks, but after the ridiculous argument they’d had outside the bar the previous night, she’d enlisted a little support. Just in case.

“I thought it’d be fun,” she tells him without preamble, daring him to contradict her, and Tommy Miller glances up with a groan. 

“Fun? Baker, it’s not even noon. Why the fuck did you drag me out of bed for this?”

Mike’s eyes flash, and Ginny tells herself she imagined it when a moment later his face is back to normal. “Normal people do this every day, Miller,” she tells him, and when she tosses the water bottle she’d been digging for his way he barely catches it. “And it’s just your good fortune you answered my text first.”

He rolls his tongue over his teeth, tipping his chin down to glare at her over the rim of his Oakleys. “None of you are normal. I hate you all. And there better be alcohol.”

“Eighteen holes from now I’ll buy you a drink,” Ginny tells him, trying very hard to ignore the dawning realization that between Blip and Evelyn, and Lawson and Amelia, she’s wedged herself firmly into a situation with Miller anyone else might construe as a date. Amelia has been subtle about it, but she’s taken to warning Ginny not to let herself get too friendly with Tommy Miller, and Ginny doesn’t have the heart (or the guts) to tell her that even if she did date players, pitchers aren’t her type.

Mike is still staring hard at her, sending her an indecipherable look. 

“You’re a piece of fucking work, Baker, you know that?” 

Ginny ignores the way her stomach lurches when Mike tips his head back and laughs at Miller’s words.

4\. Putt

She’s riding on the high of their playoff sweep, letting Tommy and Blip and Eliot swing her around the dance floor in wild twirls, swirls of color and sound flashing and spinning before her, her mind buzzing from the alcohol (someone had tried to buy her shots, she remembers that, but she also remembers a callused hand curling over her own a second before she said yes, remembers blue eyes and a concerned tilt to lips, and she remembers turning them down and being spun onto the dance floor by Evelyn), and last year she’d spent the week after their crushing defeat in the wildcard series locked in her hotel room, refusing to answer Amelia’s calls, until Lawson had shown up and threatened to toss her fully clothed into the shower if she didn’t stop moping (They’re not gonna trade you, rookie, this team would throw a mass protest and refuse to play unless your sorry mug is in the dugout), so this is a new and wonderful adventure, and she doesn’t even care how far they make it any more - they’ve done it, against all odds, they’re so close to the World Series she can taste it and even if they don’t win - even if they don’t, she has this story. She has this team.

She has this stupid bar, and this stupid dance, and this glorious night.

“Mind if I cut in?”

Tommy hoots, out of shock or amusement Ginny doesn’t know, and he spins her straight into Mike’s arms, laughing at her surprised face when she stumbles into the bulk of Mike Lawson. The same Mike Lawson who has never once in his life done anything but sit at the bar and brood when they go out on nights like these. 

Ginny catches her bearings, amused to note that her captain has zero sense of rhythm and seems to mostly be swaying on the spot with her hand captured in his own, flat against his chest. “What.”

“Bar’s called Hole In One, Baker. I don’t know if you noticed, but golf is kinda our thing.”

“Baseball is our thing,” she tells him, and he shakes his head as he hides a smile. 

Ginny glances up at him, catching his gaze, and her eyes dip a little nervously, holding instead on the line of stubble across his jawline. 

“I miss the beard,” she tells him, without really meaning to, and it takes a considerable amount of effort not to smack herself in the forehead. 

“You and me both. I feel ridiculous. I feel like I’m walking around naked.”

Her ears burn, but she ignores it. 

“Told you not to bet against Evelyn.”

He chuffs out a laugh, grinning down at her, and she catches his gaze again. Holds it. There’s a serious, pondering look in his eyes, and she wonders, not for the first time, if the only reason he’s never made a move on her is because of her rule.

“You did good, today,” he finally mutters, breaking the tension, continuing to sway her to music that has no business being swayed to. “You still call me off too much, but you did good today.”

“You weren’t so bad yourself, Mr. Grand Slam.”

He grins, and it looks strange, somehow, his stubble covered jaw rolling back. “It’s homers or nothing for me. Can’t steal a base like these young folks, anymore.”

She wants to say more - wants to tell him that she’s tired of her own stupid rules, that she forgives him for all the dumb shit that sits between them untouched, wants to ask him why he stopped calling her ‘rookie’, wants to tell him that she never would have made it without him (he’d laugh, he’d give her a serious look, and he’d tell her, respectfully, that that was a load of shit).

“I think I’m done,” he says before she can get a word in, quiet enough that she’s the only one who could possibly hear it, and her heart stutters in her chest, a sudden aching loss bubbling up. “It ain’t gonna get better than this.”

He’s talking about the game, but he’s staring at her like she holds all the worlds answers, but before she can exclaim, before she can utter a single rejoinder, Tommy and Blip are on either side of her, arms slung across her shoulders, demanding they join her for karaoke, and he shakes his head and smiles, waving her off.

She loses sight of him in the crowd as she is dragged off, but her heart presses furious and loud against her chest, and her usually mediocre voice takes on a croak Blip pretends not to notice as they sing next to a tone deaf Tommy.

5\. Sink

They don’t advance to the final, and Ginny has never been happier to lose a game in her life as she is that last game. He can’t quit. He won’t.

He doesn’t.

But everyone knows he’s on his way out. The fans, the media, the team, they all know it, and they work together like they’ve never worked before. 

He takes her out to the range on days where his knees aren’t shit, and they pretend like that dance never happened, like he’d never said the words that had sent her into a panic. Only, every once in a while, when he thinks she isn’t looking, he’ll glance up from the tee and stare at her with that serious look he gets sometimes, and she knows. 

The closer they get to the end, the closer she gets to Mike, and they pretend they’re friends, they pretend he’s still her captain and she’s still the rookie he took under his wing, but he’s running out of things to teach her. The thought of him leaving the game, of leaving his spot behind the strike zone for good, it doesn’t quite terrify her the way it did before. 

They breeze through playoff games like they’re playing tee-ballers, and his sideways glances get more serious, and their trips to the range become more frequent. He tells her about his ex, first in stuttering half sentences, like he isn’t sure he should, and then in long, drawn out tales. She tells him about her dad, and he grins at her, hands digging into his beard, growing in long and thick again.

She throws a no hitter to clinch the league pennant.

The team invites them out for drinks, but she and Mike break into the stadium after the lights have gone out and tee up on the mound at Petco, drinking cheap beer and lobbing golf balls into the backfield until the sprinklers come on and they have to make a run for it.

They don’t sweep. It comes down to the very last game, and they’re down by three in the top of the seventh when Mike calls a time out, and she watches him make his way to the mound, irritated - she’s doing fine, following his calls, they’ve already struck out two batters, and she’s going to win this for him, whether he wants her to or not. 

“What?”

He throws his glove over his mouth, and she narrows her eyes. “I’m about to go off script here, a bit, so hear me out.”

“Lawson, get back and let me finish this game, I swear to god.”

“Usually we do this kinda thing on the green, and I guess we probably still could, but this is the last time I’m gonna be able to annoy the shit out of you like this, so.”

“What are you doing.”

The ump, she can tell, is already eyeing them in annoyance. It’s not like this is the first time this has happened.

“I don’t actually have anything to say about the game, because you’re a hell of a pitcher, Baker.”

Ginny rolls her neck, and she can see his eyes curl up like he’s grinning behind his glove.

“Anyway, I was gonna wait on this but I’m an impatient guy, so. As of the end of this game I’m not a ball player. Tomorrow night? However this goes? You and me. We’re gonna do this thing.”

She gapes at him, and he nods. 

“Good, that’ll make them think you’re annoyed with me. Or - oh shit, you’re actually annoyed with me.”

“Lawson.”

“Baker.”

“Finish the damn game. It’s your last one.”

“Is that a yes or...?”

He drops his glove at her hard glare, backing away on a grin before he slides his mask back into place.

Ginny’s fastball tops out at 92, and they’re up by two at the bottom of the eighth. At the top of the ninth, Ginny strikes out the first three up to bat.

In the crush of bodies surrounding her in the middle of the field, she hears Blip’s wild laughter, and feels Tommy’s hands curl around her shoulders and shake her hard. In the chaos, Mike curls an arm around her waist and leans in towards her ear. “Well?”

She shakes her head at him. 

“Not until you’re officially retired, old man!”

6\. Hole In One

“If you ever use that phrase to describe what we just did ever again, I’ll leak to the media that your favorite movie is Frozen,” she tells him, curling against the warmth of his chest, her fingers sliding along his jaw brushing through the beard.

“You’re right. If I’m being completely accurate, it was more of a triple bogey, but I was trying to be -.”

He wrestles her back to his side when she dives for her phone.


End file.
